Sugar and Cigarette Smoke
by Anrheithwyr
Summary: Luna tasted of sugar and cigarette smoke, Lavender noted one day as she pressed the younger blonde's mouth against her's, taking in every part of Luna's being. Lavender only noticed because she thought it was an odd combination to smell of, and the peculiarity of how Luna might have acquired both smells, considering the fact that both sugar and cigarettes were a rarity in prison.


_**AU, Voldemort won. Compliant with Heading North. Warning: mentions of suicide and torture.**_

…

Luna tasted of sugar and cigarette smoke, Lavender noted one day as she pressed the younger blonde's mouth against her's, taking in every part of Luna's being.

Lavender only noticed because she thought it was an odd combination to smell of, and the peculiarity of how Luna might have acquired both smells, considering the fact that both sugar and cigarettes were a rarity in prison.

But she relished in the taste of sugar and cigarette smoke anyway, because that was the taste of Luna, and Luna meant home. Luna meant safety. Luna meant love and protection and a pair of comforting arms to hold her at night.

Sugar and cigarette smoke, two oddities that shouldn't belong together, but just did, the sweet and the sickly mixing together, just like Luna and Lavender themselves.

Luna, the sugar, the one who spoke with comfort in her voice and hugs always ready to be handed out. Luna, the sugar, who dreamt of a better world outside of their prison cell, where she was free to be herself and fulfil her wish of one day growing the biggest rose bush in all of England.

It was an impractical, childish dream for an impractical, childish girl, and Lavender loved her for it, kissing Luna all over her face as they discussed the rose bush that Luna wished to grow.

Lavender, the cigarette smoke, the harsh, in-your-face attitude that left her on edge and always alert. Lavender, the cigarette smoke, who ran to Luna whenever she was afraid and bruised, wishing she was able to remain humble and silent like the blonde, because she didn't _try _to get into trouble with the guards, but it always happened anyway.

It was pointless to try, but she tried to stay humble like Luna, who rarely ever got beating or punishments, because she never spoke out or fought back.

And for the longest time, it was the two of them in one cell, with dreams of rose bushes and nights where it didn't hurt to fall asleep. They laid in bed together, limbs tangled until they were nearly one, and their hearts beat in tandem.

Life went on in that way for a long time, until Lavender stopped counting the days and Luna stopped trying to figure out the season, because it was always cold this far down in Azkaban.

Until one day, a third girl was shoved into their cell, a girl they did not know and could not have known, because this girl was a muggleborn by the name of Hermione Granger, and muggleborns weren't allowed to be around half-bloods like Lavender or purebloods like Luna.

Things were different after the arrival of this new cellmate, who talked even less than Luna, only staring at Luna and Lavender when they clambered into one bed together, resting on a hard mattress and buried under thin blankets in a futile effort to keep warm.

At first, Hermione seemed reluctant to talk, or even meet their eyes, instead choosing to keep to herself, avoiding even being in the same half of the room as the other two cell mates, but as it became apparent that the three of them were _not_ going to be separated, (heavens forbid that Lavender lose Luna) Hermione seemed to grow a little warmer.

"How long have you guys been in love?" Hermione asked one day, and Lavender replied, "three years," while Luna said, "forever".

This seemed to amuse all three of them, and they fell into an easy sort of silence for a while, just thinking and dreaming of outside, always of outside.

"Why are you here?" Hermione asked later that night, when Luna and Lavender had tucked themselves into one bed and Hermione had laid down in another. "Why did you end up in Azkaban in the first place?"

"I kissed a Muggle girl," Lavender explained, demonstrating by kissing Luna deeply on the lips, letting her fingers trail through the blonde's hair before turning to grin at Hermione again. "I kissed her until they came to take me away and then I kissed her some more. The Ministry always said it was wrong to kiss a Muggle, but with her, it always felt right."

"My daddy runs a newspaper," Luna replied, "and sometimes, he writes things that the Ministry doesn't approve of. So, as punishment, they took me away from him and brought me here. I don't mind, though, not with Lavender by my side to keep me company."

"I fell in love with a wizard boy," Hermione told them in a whisper a few minutes later, and Lavender could hear the tremble in her voice. "He was a pureblood, and we knew it was illegal, but I loved him more than anything else in the world. When the Death Eaters came for me, though, I was so afraid. We had been turned in, you see, by his own brother. I think, though, that my pureblood boy is in here, somewhere in Azkaban, and I worry that he might think I'm dead."

The next night, Hermione joined Luna and Lavender in bed, sleeping up against the wall and mumbling in her sleep, whispering almost-prayers for someone to come get her out of here.

Lavender wondered if she dreamt of her pureblood wizard, and then she wondered what it would be like to kiss Hermione Granger, the muggleborn. Would her lips be soft, like Luna's, or pillowy, like the first girl that Lavender had ever kissed, the Muggle girl who had landed Lavender in Azkaban just because she'd fallen in love with the "wrong" person.

"You like her," Luna commented the next morning, and it wasn't a question, because Luna never seemed to ask questions. She just _knew_, like some sort of sixth sense. "You like Hermione Granger, and you want to kiss her."

"Yes," Lavender replied, because in a place like Azkaban, there was no point in lying about things like that. "But I won't, I promise, because I love you, Luna."

Because even if Luna was sugar and Lavender was cigarette smoke, what they had was love, and it was the kind of true love that usually only seemed to exist in faery tales. Lavender couldn't breathe without Luna, and it hurt too much to think of losing her.

Until one day, that promise of pain came to fulfil itself; Azkaban, they say, used to be run by Dementors, big, floating demons of death and suffering, but now they had human guards, and that was almost worst.

Because a Dementor could put fear into you and leave you empty, but so could a human, and the guards at Azkaban seemed more than eager to do so. They seemed to pick victims for their weekly "punishment" sessions at random, grabbing anyone they could get their hands on and dragging them away to a place that seemed to change them in ways Lavender didn't like.

And there came a day when Luna did not come back from her lunch or that night or for three whole days. Lavender grew worried, ranting that she'd punch the next guard she saw, refusing to sleep or eat or shower.

Hermione tried to talk her down, attempting to convince Lavender that Luna was in no pain, but she didn't know. She didn't know about the ones who never came back from their punishments, or the ones who came back _wrong _and wonky.

"You have to respect the guards," Hermione tried to warn Lavender when she cussed one out for stopping by and telling Lavender to stop her crying. "If you don't respect them, then bad things will happen. Someone might get hurt, and I don't want that for you."

"Respect is earned, you know?" Lavender replied, sinking to the floor of their cell, sobbing loudly and begging Luna to come back _whole_ and still as Lavender's true love, rather than some broken stranger she did not know. "Respect is earned, and they haven't earned it."

On the fourth day, Luna was directed back to their prison cell, her blonde hair hanging limp, face dirty and smudged with bruises. Her lips had cuts on them, her arms bloody, and her normally vibrant blue eyes were dull and empty.

"Luna? Luna, oh Luna, are you okay?" Lavender begged her girlfriend, her true love, trying to give her a kiss, but Luna only pushed past her and laid down on the top bunk of their bed, the one that she had not slept in for almost three years. "Luna? Luna, what did they do to you? Did they hurt you? Are you in pain? Luna, please, talk to me!"

But Luna didn't talk, instead choosing to curl up on her hard mattress without even a blanket to keep her warm, staring off into space at something no one else could see. She did not talk or even seem to hardly breathe, and when Lavender tried to climb up there with her, Luna pushed the taller girl back down the ladder, mumbling nonsensically.

Luna had been the sugar, the sweet one, the loving one who would never have hurt anyone; Lavender had been the cigarette smoke, making you cough and choke on her "_I don't give a shit_" attitude.

Now, though, Luna seemed to be broken, and Lavender was lost on how to help her true love. Even Hermione could only just stare in confusion, unsure of what she was supposed to do except for climb into her own bed and whisper "_I'm sorry_" to Lavender.

And when Hermione woke up the next morning, it was to find that both of her cell mates were dead, Luna smothered in her sleep and Lavender hanging, with a bed sheet wrapped around her neck, eyes closed for good.

Hermione screamed and screamed until the guards stopped by, and then she screamed as they removed the bodies and told her to shut up, to calm down. She screamed right up until someone handed her a potion that was meant to shut her up, and then Hermione fell asleep for a long time.

She wasn't sure how long she was asleep, but by the time she had woken up, she had two more cell mates, a loud-mouthed Chinese girl names Su Li with inquisitive eyes and a shivering redhead named Susan Bones who apologised for every little thing.

They didn't ask and Hermione never mentioned that there had once been two other girls in this cell before them, two girls who had shared a bed and shared food and loved each other more than anything else in the world.

She didn't mention the way they would both kiss her good night or drag Hermione into bed with them on especially cold nights, or the way that the two girls who used to be in here were happy and kind, even in prison, even in pain.

Hermione didn't mention that both those girls were dead now, most likely thrown into shallow graves just outside of Azkaban, unmarked and unremembered and unspoken of. She didn't mention that, for one brief month, (had it really only been a month?) Hermione Granger, the muggleborn, had had two very, very great friends.

And now they were both dead.


End file.
